Bruins can’t do much right in sloppy loss to Canucks

Thursday

From sub-par goaltending to poor puck-handling to indifferent defense, the Bruins couldn’t find much positive in Thursday night’s 8-5 loss to the Canucks.

BOSTON -- Here and there it was possible to find at least a decent number, but they were mostly bad.

The most tell-tale statistic of all, though, might have been this: The Bruins went 0 for 2 when it came to goalies on Thursday night.

“Obviously, neither guy was on their game,” coach Bruce Cassidy said after neither Jaroslav Halak nor Tuukka Rask could save the Bruins from themselves, or very many shots, in an 8-5 loss to the Canucks at TD Garden. “That’s a problem.”

And it happened on a night when another problem may have been solved, too: The Bruins, who have searched all season for secondary scoring, got a pair of even-strength goals from the second line of Joakim Nordstrom (one assist, plus-2), David Krejci (two even-strength assists) and Jake DeBrusk (goal, assist at 5 on 5), plus a goal from a defenseman (Matt Grzelcyk, first of the season), but on a night when their penalty-killers were ineffective when it counted, and their goalies yielded eight goals on only 33 shots, it was hard to talk about silver linings.

“Obviously, I have to be better, and we have to be better as a group,” said Halak, who was pulled for the first time in what has been an outstanding season. “That’s the bottom line. We have to regroup quickly, because we have two tough games.”

They’re both at home, against the Maple Leafs on Saturday night and the Golden Knights on Sunday evening. The Bruins, 8-5-2 after losing two of their last three games and three of their last five, have to reverse course in a hurry.

“Toronto, obviously, is a division rival that we should have no problem getting up for, especially after tonight,” Cassidy said. “I imagine there will be – there better be some energy in that game.”

Cassidy’s decision to yank Halak (14 shots, five goals) with just 5:07 left in the second period was based largely on his play, and partly in the hopes that it would change momentum. It did, briefly, when DeBrusk’s power-play goal 2:42 before intermission brought the B’s within 5-4. Erik Gudbranson’s screened, last-minute goal on Rask, however, put the Canucks back ahead by two, and was symptomatic of one of Thursday’s problems.

“I don’t think we got a shot block up top from our forwards,” said Cassidy. “So, (it’s) a little disappointing in that aspect of the game. I don’t think we were willing to pay the price.”

Besides goaltending and an unwillingness to block shots, especially during some important shorthanded situations (the Canucks got second-period power-play goals from Ben Hutton and former Bruin Loui Eriksson after Patrice Bergeron gave the Bs their only lead, 2-1), there were turnovers like the Danton Heinen-David Backes missed connection that let Bo Horvat score just 2:46 into the game, and a third-period power-play opportunity that ultimately killed the Bruins’ chances of coming back.

At the end of a 5 on 3 that didn’t work out, Rask (14 shots, three goals) came out to play a puck that had been lobbed out of the Canucks zone, and tried to fire it back the other way to get a new rush started. Instead, he hit Horvat, who had just left the penalty box, and Horvat deposited the puck into the unguarded net to push the visitors’ lead to 7-4 with 10:20 to play.

“I would have liked to get a little more wood on it,” Rask said, “but yeah, I wanted it, I messed up -- my mistake.”

Cassidy wondered, post-game, if he might have been better served sticking with Halak, who was 4-1-2, 1.45, .952 entering the game (and didn’t take Thursday’s loss because Rask surrendered the decisive goal). The way both goalies and most of their teammates performed, though, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference.

“Its neither here nor there now,” the coach said. “I don’t think, if you ask either goalie, they were on and that’s that.

“We score five goals and usually that’s enough to win. It’s going to happen from time to time .... it happened tonight. It snowballed on both of them.”

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